Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers • Hacker News Board

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#781

Post by gfodor » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:00 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #610

gfodor wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between saying it was a call, and saying you believe it was a call. There is evidence to the contrary, so we at best cannot be sure without some kind of due process. People are free to believe what they want, of course. If someone is going to claim they are not trumpeting a narrative and are making fact based claims, and not opinions based on their interpretation of words and events, then I will…

> There is a difference between saying it was a call, and saying you believe it was a call. No, there isn’t. Like, literally, the utterance “X is true” cannot mean anything other than “I believe that X is true and believe that belief to be justified”. All statements are statements of belief, and all fact claims are based on interpretation of events (and the utterance of words are, themselves, events.)

Such pedantry emerging from what I can’t imagine to be anything other than a strong desire to deliberately misunderstand me means it’s not worth further engagement. Good luck.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#782

Post by erichocean » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #751

erichocean wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it this way: I can give Amazon zero attention and still know what they are going to do, simply by paying attention elsewhere. Can you? I suspect you could too. We all can, none of this is a secret. So…is Amazon a node in the political decision making apparatus if you can ignore them entirely and still predict their behavior? I would argue that is strong evidence Amazon is not a decision node when it comes…

I think your attempt at categorizing political vs non-political decisions is arbitrary and harming the utility of your computing analogy.

Perhaps you are right and there is no political solution.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#783

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #422

apple_innocent wrote: post #337

"In 2010, DNA sequencing company Complete Genomics said that "an interruption of services by Amazon Web Services, on whom we rely to deliver finished genomic data to our customers, would result in our customers not receiving their data on time." Gaming company Zynga warned about how its AWS foundation could quickly vanish when it filed the prospectus for its initial public offering in 2011. "AWS may terminate the agr…

My suggestion that governments shouldn't rely on third-parties for their infra, didn't go down well with HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25639520

[deleted]

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#784

Post by freeflight » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

glogla wrote: post #162

pmlnr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. One hard truth: it would have been enough to look at European laws made after WWII, and adopt them in the US as well in the first place.

Interestingly, "typical European Free Speech laws" are both more and less restricting than you would see in the US - there's more limits on harmful ideologies and violence but less restrictions on sex and nudity, for example. Of course it's not just constitutions and laws - movie ratings are not de iure laws but work that way de facto - and EU limits other things, like advertisement of pharmaceuticals. Comparing the…

> there's more limits on harmful ideologies and violence but less restrictions on sex and nudity, for example.

Also more mindful about privacy, in many EU countries one can't just doxx people, not even criminals.

A popular example is this story about a Swiss parliament secretary who got fired for posting nudes from her workplace.

EU outlets censored her face and left the nipple [0], US and AUS outlets showed her face but censored her nipple [1], while the British Mirror pixelated both [2].

[0] https://images05.xn--sterreich-z7a.at/sex_01.jpg/rl2015_arti...

[1] https://www.9news.com.au/world/swiss-secretary-posted-nude-s...

[2] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/secretary-working-s...

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#785

Post by nautilus12 » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

I'm just going to come out and say it. Isn't everyone a bit more nervous about the precedent set by amazon after the parler deplatform. Regardless of how horrible the things were said there, aren't there companies out there kind of wondering if AWS is a risk now?

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#786

Post by abakker » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #684

abakker wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone brought pipe bombs that he made himself...

To the Capitol? Or are you spewing fake news?

I mean, I’m going off of this:

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/seeking-info/suspected-pipe-bombs...

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-inaugurati...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.al.com/news/birmingham/2021...

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#787

Post by jimz » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #613

Aerroon wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free expression is chaotic. It always has been and it always will be. It will always have lies and misinformation, some people will even believe the lies. But this is also the beauty of free expression - it prevents anyone from using it to enact total control. Speech that is free will always seed doubt against ideas, regardless whether those ideas are true or false. It's an avenue that allows anything to be questione…

> But this is also the beauty of free expression - it prevents anyone from using it to enact total control. Yeah, right up until you're talked into electing a dictator. It's just as well that's never happened!

And now he's out. The system's not about preemptively stopping theoretical bad acts per se (although if it actually stops real incoming threats, great), but rather, about being able to evaluate and change course when human fallibility inevitably leads to bad policies, bad choices, and bad outcomes. It's a work in progress, particularly as to how we can properly disincentivize future attempts and hold those who actively attempted to overthrow the Constitutional state by force without resorting to Minority-Report style overbroad invasions of privacy, but at least we can do that. These things are such non-starters in China and Russia that the former more or less acquiesced to a corrupt state and the latter has an economy that was so thoroughly disposessed by the few from the people that its GDP is on par with New York City despite 60 times the population, and with no recourse. Change is never easy nor always correct, but at least that opportunity exists here. It doesn't in many places that purportedly have "order" over "liberty" as the central value, as they end up with neither.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#788

Post by jessedhillon » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #476

jessedhillon wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an intent to award the presidency to the loser How would they have done that? Nobody would listen to a bunch of hooligans pronouncing orders from the House rostrum. In a coup, someone like a general is waiting to hear the signal to throw in with the coup leaders, providing actual institutional power to the usurpers. There was no institutional power behind these people -- do you think some general at Andrews was wai…

> How would they have done that? Attempted murder is still a felony, even if's a very dumb attempt. The same is true for coups. > In a coup, someone like a general is waiting to hear the signal to throw in with the coup leaders, providing actual institutional power to the usurpers. The Q folks think this is exactly what the military is going to do.

The line I responded to was about "awarding the contest to the loser," that means transferring institutional power. Not just killing people on TV.

In order for a coup to be successful, institutions need to endorse the new order or have their heads replaced with loyalists. Capturing the symbolic seat of power, or even killing elected representatives doesn't accomplish that. In this scenario there would've needed to be a body of bureaucrats and officers in every branch and every agency who would see the house leader lynched on TV and then said, yes I'm ready to do the bidding of the usurping administration.

This would be hundreds of people, if not thousands, in the highest ranking civilian positions who would all have to endorse or be arrested. Then because this is a federalist system, local governments would all have had to endorse the new system or be replaced. Also, the judiciary. Also, all branches of the military.

Unless you believe we were on the precipice of this happening, it wasn't a coup, and if you do think we were anywhere close to seeing this happen, you're insane and wrong. It was at best a bumbling terrorist attack. More accurately IMO, it was mob violence resulting from an epic failure of crowd control.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#789

Post by wolco5 » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

patmorgan23 wrote: post #778

wolco5 wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who builds your roads? You contract out road building because it's too difficult for the government to do? Where do you live?

In the states most roads and infrastructure projects are built by private companies that are contracted to do so by the government. There's offeten a public bid process between multiple companies to decide who gets the contract.

That seems like the wrong type of job to outsource. You outsource for expert help. This can be done in house with more control over when work occurs to sync with low traffic volume times.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#790

Post by nitwit005 » Tue, Jan 19, 2021, 5:15 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #11

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…

I'm not sure it's free speech exactly, but the ability to hang put with like minded people exclusively. The internet makes that fairly easy. You just ban everyone who disagrees from your little forum, or drive them off.

I don't see any clear fix though. Even the big sites like Facebook and Reddit have that going on.

Of course, I admit this went on before with things like religious groups that isolated people to convert them to the cult, but it's far easier to generate the effect now.